Gave it another go...took the fortress and was about to attack one of Gamblag's cities and thought I should look at what the AOW3 community says about sieges but my enthusiasm for the game is seriously waning. Looking at the message boards I also see that I am not the only one unenthusiastic about the elven court campaign, I suspect I would have a lot more fun if I played on a random map at the easy level, but that just begs the question--why not just switch to a fantasy 4x without a tactics emphasis like Endless Legend (or Fallen Enchantress?

I think I am going to give up on this game after still struggling with the second leg of the introductory campaign which I find unforgiving. My understanding is that the game rewards aggressive play whereas my natural inclination is to "turtle". So I am supposed to deploy my armies and let them get experience which resulted in me save scumming and replaying battle after battle to minimize casualties. After I took a fortress by the Fey city (which I replayed over and over so I would lose only 1 unit as opposed to 2) I forgot to save the game. I thought I would take a breather and try to get my cities more setup. So I played around 20 more rounds building walls, builder halls, and trying to produce a few more units. Then Gamblag comes around and defeats an army of this lizard leader dude who was my friend forcing me to lose the game. And I have found that the game's autosave does not really help--it'd be better if saved to the past two rounds and not the immediate last round.

I really am trying to get into the tactical combat, but again, my natural inclination is to get absorbed in the strategic stuff and find the tactical stuff an annoyance. I tried to think of it like the SSI goldbox games but the problem is I have loss aversion so I really don't like losing units (and in the Goldbox games losing a hero is rare, and when it happens they can be resurrected).

I am really temped to just try to experiment with Endless Legend or Fallen Enchantress instead because I find the intensive combat focus of this game to be a drag.